“Niyah…don’t cry,” said Noah as, crying himself, he crawled up onto my knees and tried to wipe away my tears. I could hear sniffles echoing all around the room and people whispering for tissues, as if everyone around us had had their hearts broken too. I didn’t want to cry in front of them. I wanted to be on my own and go to sleep and never, ever wake up again. But I couldn’t stop crying and I couldn’t stop my face from feeling as if it was burning again.
Miss Audrey was wiping away a tear and everyone around us had fallen silent. I could see Ben and Travis wiping their faces too, and wondered if they had known. I wanted to know if Mrs. Iwuchukwu knew—and Sophie too. And why they had never said anything to me if they had.
“Aniyah,” said Professor Grewal quietly. “How about we go take a look at your mum’s star now? You probably already know this, since you’re a star hunter, but we have one of the biggest, most wonderful telescopes in the world a few doors away from us.”
I looked up, feeling hopeful. “Really?” I asked, wiping my face dry with my tiger sleeves. “Can Noah and Ben and Travis come too?”
Professor Grewal smiled. “Of course! Audrey, would you like to join us?”
Miss Audrey smiled and stood with a rustle that made her black dress rise like a flower turning back into a bud, holding out her hand to me.
Jumping to their feet, Travis and Ben joined me and Noah, and we all followed Professor Grewal and Miss Audrey and Mr. Withers out of the room. As the crowd of penguin-suited men and shimmering ladies stood aside to let us pass, I felt hands patting me on the back and people whispering, “Brave girl!”
Reaching a small door behind the stage, Mr. Withers got out a card, beeped it next to a machine, and held the door open for us. Behind it was a tiny corridor. Professor Grewal and Miss Audrey stayed by my side as we walked through lots of corridors, until we reached a large steel door that looked as if it belonged to a bank. Above it, in large golden letters, was a sign that said the great equatorial telescope, 1893.
“Here we are.” Professor Grewal smiled as Mr. Withers grabbed the handle and, with a loud thud, pushed the door open, which made the lights flicker on.
“After you, Aniyah,” whispered Professor Grewal, pointing to the room with her head.
I took a step onto the red-and-black-tiled floor that looked like a never-ending chessboard, and gazed up. There in front of me was the longest, shiniest white telescope I had ever seen, stretching like a brand-new road leading straight into the sky. All around it were lines of white metal that crissed and crossed across the ceiling like a giant web, right up to the huge pointy dome above the telescope.
Taking out a special red-colored key from her pocket, Professor Grewal went up to a metal box high up on the wall and, swinging it open, slotted the key into a hole near a large yellow button.
“Flying pancakes…,” whispered Ben as Noah grabbed my hand and Travis’s mouth fell open.
Together we stood and watched as, from high above, the web started to move and the dome began to split apart, like a giant eyelid that was beginning to open.
After Professor Grewal had made the eye open all the way, she sat down in a special chair, and began to turn lots of wheels and knobs and spinning dials to make the telescope turn and tilt and help her search for my mum’s star.
“Will this help?” I asked, suddenly remembering the star map I had made.
Professor Grewal opened up the now very scrunchy piece of paper, and held it to the light so that she could see it better.
“This is very good,” she said, and Miss Audrey took it and looked too. “Where did you draw that?” she asked, looking at me with a smile.
“From my window at Mrs. Iwuchukwu’s,” I said. “The one at the back of the house—not the front.”
“Mrs. Iwuchukwu?” asked Professor Grewal.
“Our f-foshter mum,” explained Travis, taking a step forward and then a step back again, as if he was speaking to a general.
“Ah,” said Professor Grewal.
She walked over to Mr. Withers and spoke to him in whispers as he busily typed things into a large computer. Above us, the giant telescope moved to the left and then down and then up and down again, until Mr. Withers finally went, “Aha!”
“That’s it,” said Professor Grewal. “Come and have a look, Aniyah.”
Professor Grewal lifted me onto the seat so I could see better. She helped me put my eye to the telescope. For a few seconds, everything went black, and then I saw her. A fiery bluish-white ball of light.
Pushing my eye further into the eyepiece, I whispered, “Hello, Mum!” The star seemed to shine brighter for a second, as if it had heard me.
“I want to see Mum!” whispered Noah, pulling on my tail. Professor Grewal helped him up onto my lap and showed him too. After he kept asking, “Where? Where?” he finally seemed to see Mum, and gave her a wave and blew her a loud kiss.
“Where is she going?” I asked, remembering how the news report had said she was traveling across the sky, and wondering if Mum had defied the laws of physics because she was trying to get to somewhere special.
“Let’s see, shall we?” said Mr. Withers as he moved the telescope a few millimeters to the side with some dials. Checking to see it was where he wanted it to be, he told me to look again.
“Can you see a shape made up of some extra-bright blue stars there?” he asked. “Like Orion’s Belt but longer and made up of four big stars instead of three—sort of like a wonky tail?”
I nodded, because the telescope was so big and powerful I could see the shape without even having to imagine it!
“And below those four bright stars, can you see another three floating underneath them, like a hook?”
I nodded again as I tried not to blink. I didn’t ever want to forget what I was seeing.
“Well, those seven stars form a special cluster called the Pleiades constellation—or the Seven Sisters,” explained Mr. Withers. “They’re the brightest, most famous sisters in all the universe, because they lie closest to the earth. Ever since the beginning of time, they have always been there, looking down on us. It’s thought that each of those stars are more than a hundred times brighter than our sun.”
“Really?” I asked.
“Whoa! No way!” cried Ben.
“Why are they called the S-Seven Sistersh?” asked Travis, edging closer toward the telescope.
“Maybe Miss Audrey can tell you that?” Professor Grewal smiled.
“Well, I do actually know this one, since I played one of them in a movie,” said Miss Audrey as she gave Noah’s hair a stroke and squeezed my shoulder. “You see, legend has it that the seven sisters were once the most beautiful women on earth, and they loved to do nothing better than dance under the night sky. But one day, a hunter called Orion wanted to take them, and so he chased them and chased them and chased them. He chased them for seven whole years, which of course made the sisters incredibly afraid and tired. So Zeus, the god of the skies and thunder, decided to hide them away for good and make sure Orion could never reach them, by turning them all into stars!”
“Whoa!” said Ben again.
“And he didn’t stop there,” Miss Audrey said with a smile. “He turned Orion into a constellation too, and placed him on the other side of the sky so that he could never, ever reach the seven sisters again, and so that they would be safe forever!”
“G-good!” said Travis angrily.
“Now, the reason why we’re showing them to Aniyah,” said Professor Grewal, “is—”
Professor Grewal stopped talking, as from a distance we could hear loud cries and footsteps and shouting.
Ben and Travis looked at me, their eyes wide with fear and surprise.
“There you are!” cried a voice as the door to the Equatorial Room flew open.
“Mum!” shouted Ben and Travis as Mrs. Iwuchukwu ran in and, diving toward us, began crying and hugging and touching our faces. Sophie walked in behind her, but she looked red and embarrassed and kept looking over her shoulder at Frank and the two police officers who were holding their helmets in their hands.
I watched as Ben said sorry and Travis nodded and Noah looked scared but happy and Miss Audrey shook hands with everyone, but I couldn’t move or talk or say anything. I felt as if I was frozen in time, and could only watch everyone else moving and feeling things apart from me.
“How did you get here so quick?” asked Ben, hugging Mrs. Iwuchukwu so hard she had to loosen his arms and tell him to let her breathe.
“We were with the police in London already!” cried Mrs. Iwuchukwu, her whole face so wet and shiny it looked like a brand-new ice rink. “As soon as we heard you were at Victoria Station this morning we came down, but the police lost you! Then a woman said she had seen you all going into the Greenwich Foot Tunnel, but we were too late again!”
“Oh! The ice cream w-woman!” said Travis happily.
“Good thing too, otherwise I think I would have gone mad,” said Mrs. Iwuchukwu, shaking her head. Then, turning to me, she asked, “Now, what’s all this about a star?”
Everyone looked at me, but I kept looking at the floor. Something red and fiery was starting to grow inside me, and I had to let it out. It was hurting me too much.
Looking up at Mrs. Iwuchukwu, I asked her, “Did you know…about my dad? And what he did?”
I heard Miss Audrey sniff and saw Noah staring at me looking confused and Ben and Travis looking worried.
Mrs. Iwuchukwu didn’t say anything but came and took my hands.
“Yes, Aniyah, I knew. Because it’s my job to know. And to protect you.”
I watched as Mrs. Iwuchukwu’s glittery eyes filled with tears, and as Miss Audrey’s did the same.
“Mrs. I. made us promise not to tell,” said Ben quietly as he came to stand in front of me too. “But it’s because we’re not supposed to talk to you about stuff that might hurt you, and we didn’t want to say anything wrong. Not because we were trying to keep secrets or anything.”
Travis nodded quickly and looked at me through his fringe.
Red-hot stinging drops of water began to burn my eyes again and fall down my cheeks. It felt as if everyone had lied to me.
“I know it will have been hard for you to remember everything, darling,” said Mrs. Iwuchukwu as she gripped my hands tighter and tighter. “And I know how confusing it can be and how unfair it all is. But we’re all here to help you, eh?”
Everyone nodded at me as Noah clung on to my arm, his face making it wet.
“Oh, Aniyah! We’re so sorry!” said Professor Grewal. Her face was wet too and her eye makeup was beginning to fall down her face, which made her start to look like a panda bear.
I nodded back and tried to dry my eyes, but they wouldn’t stop leaking. I opened my mouth to tell everyone that it was OK, because Mum’s heart was so strong that she hadn’t lost us and was never going to leave us and that I was lucky because I had seen her heart burning in the sky too. But instead of making words, my body made a long and wailing cry.
Pulling me toward her, Mrs. Iwuchukwu squeezed me into a hug and didn’t let me push her away, while Miss Audrey hugged me from the back.
“None of it is your fault, Aniyah,” whispered Mrs. Iwuchukwu as she stroked my hair and gave a long, sad sigh. “Your mum loved you, and you loved your mum, and that’s all that matters.”
I opened my mouth again because I wanted to say that it wasn’t all that mattered. Because I hadn’t saved her. Nobody had saved her! But instead, my throat made another wailing sound and then fell quiet.
After what felt like a very long time, I felt the burning in my eyes begin to disappear, and someone’s hands come and hold some of my fingers that were squeezed under Mrs. Iwuchukwu’s arms. At first I thought it was Noah, because no one but Mum and Noah ever held my fingers, but when I looked down, I saw that the hand was white and freckly.
I looked up over Mrs. Iwuchukwu’s shoulder, feeling surprised. Sophie was standing in front of me, her eyes wet and red too.
“Here,” she said, holding out my locket. “I’m sorry I took it from you.”
I pushed away from Mrs. Iwuchukwu and looked down at the locket in my hand. It felt strange to have it back now that I knew Dad was a thief. Somehow it felt different. I knew I couldn’t ever wear it again, but I also knew that I wanted to keep it, because of Mum.
Just then, Frank came back into the room. Holding the door open behind him, he announced, “We’re all ready, everybody. Time to go.”